Today In APIs: Google Maps building footprints, Bing Ads V7 to retire and 17 New APIs

Google Maps now covers over 25 million building footprints across United States. Developers using Bing Ads V7 need to migrate to V8 by early 2013. Plus: Facebook announces SDK 3.0 Beta for Android, Twistory becomes another Twitter API casualty and 17 New APIs

Google Maps expands coverage of building footprints

Google Maps desktop and mobile has added 25 million new building footprints on desktop and mobile across major metropolitan regions in the United States, including Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Computer vision techniques and aerial imagery were used to generate these footprints in detailed form. Google also invites the community to report an inaccuracies and even augment the building footprints with local businesses via the Google Map Maker tool.

Bing Ads V7 API to retire in Feb 2013

Developers using Bing Ads V7 API should migrate their apps to use V8 soon. The V7 is due to retire in Feb 2013 and a migration guide is likely to be published soon. If you have already moved on to V8, you can test out your applications in the V8 sandbox.

17 New APIs

Today we had 17 new APIs added to our API directory including an on demand transportation service, a u.s. department of labor career information service, a municipal functions management service, an online balloting service, a u.s. employer identification number service, a voter registration service, an ecommerce shop creation service and a semantic data for content service. Below is more details on each of these new APIs.

Airport Transfer Worldwide API: Airport Transfer Worldwide is a web based international transfer service, which offer transfers to and from airports, railway stations, hotels, apartments, addresses and more. The service allows users to avoid long waits at airports or having to travel on public transit. Transfers are offered at fixed prices and are door-to-door in nature. A JavaScript API is available that allows users to integrate the service directly into their website and offer search functionality.

CareerOneStop API: The service provides information from the U.S. Labor Department about career opportunities, their future prospects, and their requirements. It gives access to listings of careers by title, keyword, or code along with detailed information about individual careers from the provider's O*NET service. Information about qualifications and requirements is also available.

API methods support retrieval of listings of career names by keyword or unique identifier codes. Methods also support detailed descriptions of career activities along with salary and compensation estimates and detailed qualifications required such as education and training, licensing, and certification. Methods can cross-reference military job codes to Labor Department codes for consistent access to related information.

Cityworks API: The service provides a platform for managing and scheduling municipal services provided by city and local governments. It includes cloud-based functions for scheduling service calls, public maintenance, and similar public service activities along with internal functions for city and county departments. Implementations can focus information in GIS formats to integrate services with existing mapping and geographic information system functions.

API methods support creation of service requests and work orders based on calls generated by other applications. Separately licensed API modules allow for flexible integration to meet specific local needs. A metrics API supports reporting on service activities and work completed.

ElectionsOnline Evote API: The service provides online election voting by appropriate user populations with tabulation of results. Users access ballots by logins defined by the application integrating the election function. The application specifies questions up for balloting and options that voters may select, embedded in desired display code. Reporting of results is under control of the application using the service.

API methods support verification of the voter's login credential and ballot privileges, including subgroup membership defining access to specific ballot selections, based on data provided by the application developer. Methods log each voter's selections and support definition of questions and selection options by the application using the service. Methods allow definition of candidate descriptions and other information available to voters as well as ultimate reporting of results.

Feinsearch API: The service provides lookup access to a database of employer identification numbers (EINs) and related information for over 16 million suppliers doing business with U.S. companies. It allows for verification of tax reporting accounts for vendors, contractors, and suppliers to allow compliance with payment reporting requirements. Search options allow either individual or batch lookup to retrieve EIN values or verify those supplied by vendors.

API methods support search against a database of tax-paying companies with returned data specifying EIN or Tax ID number, primary industry SIC code, phone and fax numbers, and verified addresses. The API also provides operating information like the year the company started, its employee head-count, and estimates of sales and revenue.

Illinois Voter Registration System API: The service of the U.S. state allows applications to integrate with the Illinois Voter Registration System (IVRS). As part of the U.S. federal law, Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), it allows access to voter rolls for precincts and jurisdictions within the state along with pertinent registration information for voters, households, and areas. It provides responses to legitimate requests from political committees for voter data and houses information about ballot requests submitted by voters prior to elections.

API methods support voter search by name, address, and precinct. Methods also give access to voter signatures made at time of registration and other administrative data related to verifying voter authenticity.

LemonStand API: LemonStand is an ecommerce shop creation site that aims to provide an easy and accessible way to sell things online. The LemonStand API allows users to implement custom features as well as utilize the advanced LemonStand engine in third party applications. Using the API, users can make calls to output content such as products, navigation, categories, blog posts, and other items along with product rating information, and news reviews.

Ontos API: Ontos is a provider of tools that aggregate content that is semantically related to content that already exists on a website or blog. Their API returns semantic metadata in RDF-based formats for existing text content. The API uses natural langugage processing to recognize entities and the relations between them. With the API, uses can link their text content with metadata coming from over 500,000 web documents. Full documentation is not publicly available.

Rethumb API: Rethumb is a simple service that lets users create image thumbnails by accessing a URL. Users simply need to provide the URL of an image and can pass in the desired height and width. The RESTful API can respond with images of type JPG, GIF and PNG.

RSDN Janus API: RSDN is a Russian website devoted to software development. It was created by programmers for programmers in order to compensate for the lack of materials on programming available in Russian. RSDN offers articles on a variety of topics, questions and answers, utilities, and ready-made components. The site also provides forums on which visitors may post their programming-related questions for others to view and reply to.

The RSDN Janus API enables users to synchronize forums, post to the forums, and pull up forum topics. This service employs SOAP calls issued in XML format. The RSDN website and API documentation are provided exclusively in Russian.

Saia API: Saia is one of the top LTL carriers in the United States. Less than truckload (LTL) shipping refers to the transportation of relatively small freight that is too large to be shipped by package delivery services. Saia serves the Midwest, South, Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and Western regions of the United States. North American partner coverage is offered in Alaska, Hawaii, and New England and also extends to Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.

SAINTlogin API: SAINTlogin allows users to log-in to a website or to a private network by dialing a number on their cell phones rather than by using passwords and user-IDs. The call is free since the system hangs up after the first ring. If the caller is recognized, a private session is established, and access to the requested pages is granted.

The SAINTlogin API enables developers to integrate SAINTlogin with their websites. Doing so requires the use of SOAP calls issued in XML format.

Semantic Research Semantica API: Semantic Research is a software company specializing in products that can create, view, store and share knowledge structures. Their Semantica platform is used for large-scale analytics, data fusion, data storage, visualization, sharing and collaboration of all kinds of information, be it structured, unstructured, temporal, or geospatial. An API is available that integrates thick-client analysis and analytical process management functionality into third party systems. Documentation of the API is not publicly available.

Solve Media API: Solve Media is a company that provides technology for turning CAPTCHAs into branded TYPE-IN™ ads. Instead of difficult to read letters and numbers, Solve Media CAPTCHAs ask users to type in a tagline. Solve Media also offers the option to implement CAPTCHA as security only or monetize the space by allowing advertisements in addition to security. A JavaScript API is available that allows users to add branded messages to their websites.

SPOTCatalog API: The service provides a catalog of all “scenes” or earth images acquired by satellites in the SPOT series since February 1986.
Images provide panchromatic and multispectral images of the earth's surface 60 kilometers square. Images are updated every 2-3 days with location accuracy varying from 30 to 350 meters.

API methods support image search based on location and timeframe of image acquisition, specified as beginning and end dates. Methods also allow specification of image quality parameters like resolution and maximum cloud cover and snow cover.

Tax Data Systems API: The service provides rates charged for sales and use taxes by jurisdictions in North America. Available data include tax rates charged and the national and the state or provincial levels, along with applicable county and city rates and portions of shipping and handling balances that are subject to tax.

API methods support submission of a U.S. Zip Code or Canadian province abbreviation identifying the location of the transaction, either a physical store or the buyer's location for online sales. For U.S. transactions, returned data include the state abbreviation, county name, and city name matching the submitted Zip Code, as well as the general sales and use tax rates for that specific location and total tax due. For Canadian locations, the API returns the province abbreviation and name along with the overall sales tax rate and components for GST, PST, and HST. For all locations, returned data indicate any tax due on shipping and handling.

Votizen API: The service provides tools for social connections between voters to help activists with advocacy for candidates and issues up for election. Its goal is to increase citizen impact on the political process and civic engagement by promoting relationship-building across social media outlets and other potential contact points. The service maintains a U.S. candidate database, nationwide voter records, and individual voter identification.

API methods support listings of candidates, offices, districts and other jurisdictions, and races. Methods also support logging and tracking voters and contacts with them, their local districts, and their voting records.

About the author:Romin Irani
Romin loves learning about new technologies and teaching it to others. Follow me on Google+

You are so awesome! I don't think I've read through something like that before.
So nice to discover someone with a few genuine thoughts on
this subject. Really.. thank you for starting
this up. This website is something that is required on the internet, someone with some originality!